Highly Efficient Ion Manipulator for Tandem Ion Mobility Spectrometry: Exploring a Versatile Technique by a Study of Primary Alcohols

A hyper-fast gas chromatograph coupled to an ion mobility spectrometer with high repetition rate and flow-optimized ion source to resolve the short chromatographic peaks

By combining the high selectivity of a gas chromatograph (GC) with the high sensitivity and decent selectivity of an ion mobility spectrometer (IMS), GC-IMS have become increasingly popular in many applications. However, most GC suffer from long analysis times. In contrast, an hyper-fast GC allows for extremely fast analysis in the tens of seconds while reaching comparably high resolution. In turn, coupling such hyper-fast GC with IMS requires sufficiently high repetition rate of recording full IMS spectra to resolve the short GC peaks. Therefore, we present a drift tube IMS with 100 Hz repetition rate. Key is a small effective detector volume combined with short drift length. Therefore, the ion source of the IMS combines a small reaction region with an extended field-switching ion shutter and optimized gas flows. To resolve even the shortest GC peaks with a full width at half maximum of 100 ms, a short drift length of just 41 mm was used, achieving a measurement time of 10 ms per spectrum and hence ten data points across the shortest GC peak. To avoid condensation of the sample, the entire IMS was heated isothermally to 120 °C. Despite short drift times and high temperatures, the IMS still reaches high resolving power of Rp = 60. The hyper-fast GC-IMS reaches low detection limits in the low ppbV range. For demonstration, ketone mixes and three different hop varieties were analyzed in <30 s.

Time-Resolved Ion Mobility Spectrometry with a Stop Flow Confined Volume Reaction Region

An ion source concept is described where the sample flow is stopped in a confined volume of an ion mobility spectrometer creating time-dependent patterns of ion patterns of signal intensities for ions from mixtures of volatile organic compounds and improved signal-to-noise rate compared to conventional unidirectional drift gas flow. Hydrated protons from a corona discharge were introduced continuously into the confined volume with the sample in air at ambient pressure, and product ions were extracted continuously using an electric field for subsequent mobility analysis. Ion signal intensities for protonated monomers and proton bound dimers were measured and computationally extracted using mobilities from mobility spectra and exhibited distinct times of appearance over 30 s or more after sample injection. Models, and experimental findings with a ternary mixture, suggest that the separation of vapors as ions over time was consistent with differences in the reaction rate for reactions between primary ions from hydrated protons and constituents and from cross-reactions that follow the initial step of ionization. The findings suggest that the concept of stopped flow, introduced here for the first time, may provide a method for the temporal separation of atmospheric pressure ions. This separation relies on ion kinetics and does not require chromatographic technology.

Automated Structural Activity Screening of β-Diketonate Assemblies with High-Throughput Ion Mobility-Mass Spectrometry

Embracing complexity in design, metallo-supramolecular self-assembly presents an opportunity for fabricating materials of economic significance. The array of accessible supramolecules is alluring, along with favourable energy requirements. Implementation is hampered by an inability to efficiently characterise complex mixtures. The stoichiometry, size, shape, guest binding properties and reactivity of individual components and combinations thereof are inherently challenging to resolve. A large combinatorial library of four transition metals (Fe, Cu, Ni and Zn), and six β-diketonate ligands at different molar ratios and pH was robotically prepared and directly analysed over multiple timepoints with electrospray ionisation travelling wave ion mobility-mass spectrometry. The dataset was parsed for self-assembling activity without first attempting to structurally assign individual species. Self-assembling systems were readily categorised without manual data-handling, allowing efficient screening of self-assembly activity. This workflow clarifies solution phase supramolecular assembly processes without manual, bottom-up processing. The complex behaviour of the self-assembling systems was reduced to simpler qualities, which could be automatically processed.